Thursday, November 20, 2008

They don't really make distinctions...

With the "Fudd" discussions going on here andthereabout the gun blogosphere, I was reminded of this poster Oleg did a while back...

(Plus it was a good damned excuse to post a picture of a Finnish Mosin, which just makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.)

Anyhow, I'm torn on the term "Fudd". Now, I hunt when I can; heck, one of my big dreams is an African safari. Although that is not my primary reason for owning firearms, it is definitely an ancillary one. I don't see "Fudd" as applying to all hunters, but I have met plenty over the years that would gesture to an AR hanging on the wall behind me at the shop and say "Whadda y'all needta sell them things for? Don't nobody need onea them."

I believe it's true that the political side of the house does benefit somewhat by claiming "x-many jillion" American gun owners, and counting torpid .30-30 owning hunters who don't know the Second Amendment from second gear on their ATVs among that number. However Billy-Bob Fudd gets something of a turn in the wagon with someone else pulling, too, in that every time a single mother in an urban area buys a .38 or a shotgun to keep around the house or the ammunition to feed it, she is paying an excise tax that is used to maintain hunting lands she will never use and could probably care less about. (That's right. In case you didn't know, a sizable percentage of the price of your last Glock or case of 7.62x39mm went to make sure that Cletus has someplace to shoot ducks this year.)

So, the issue is all kinds of complicated. I do think it's important to get Uncle Jed to understand that there are very few politicians who believe in what he would consider "sensible gun control", unless by "sensible gun control" he means getting rid of his handguns and everything but a double-barrel shotgun that he keeps locked in a government-mandated safe...

21 comments:

Great poster. I went hunting with my buddy last night, and he kept trying to convince me to stop hunting with my "antique" Mosin and get a real gun with a scope.

When they start making calls to ban all military style guns, everything from the bolt action guns that can trace their design back to Mauser and the lever actions that can trace their ancestry to Winchester and Henry will probably be swept up in the net along with AR's and AK clones.

Your comment about only being allowed double barreled could also have said we will end up having to buy Contenders so we won't be able to shoot up the neighborhood.

We need to work together, and if some of our hunting brethren don't understand that, we need to reach out to them and convince them that our rights are their rights.

The Pittman-Robertson Act levies an 11% tax on firearms, ammunition, archery tackle, etc. and uses it to benefit wildlife habitat. Since 1937, P-R funds have been used to conserve (i.e., to place beyond the reach of developers through trusts, partnerships, easements, refuges, and outright purchases of property) over 68,000 sq. miles of land, an area equal in size to the state of Missouri.

I do think it's important to get Uncle Jed to understand that there are very few politicians who believe in what he would consider "sensible gun control", unless by "sensible gun control" he means getting rid of his handguns and everything but a double-barrel shotgun that he keeps locked in a government-mandated safe...

Workin' on a website for it.

Good to see there's more than just me thinks the time is ripe for this.

Plus: An awful lot of the Bubba Fudd types I have known have been good-old boys up in the Big Lights from Down Home, workin' the line (Makin' Thunderbirds, frex), union members, who vote reflexively Democrat without a clue as to what that implies in a macro-political sense.

""sensible gun control" he means getting rid of his handguns and everything but a double-barrel shotgun that he keeps locked in a government-mandated safe"That's what sensible gun control means in Canada.

I'm hunter first then a shooter but more important than both of those "sports" is my love for freedom

Don't give up ground down there its to dam hard to gain it back.Volk does some fantastic posters.That poster should be posted at every gun shop

Fudd isn't a slur, it's a label for those who bring it upon themselves with their lack of comprehension.

Most vocal firearm owners seek community and coordinated action to preserve their rights. Most unvocal firearms owners are either utterly uninterested in anything but whacking a deer every year, or if they just barely catch on to the bigger picture, claim that the politicians can have their deer rifle from their cold dead hands, except they will never notice the law approaching nor be concerned by any restrictions or bans before it.

No, we shouldn't throw anyone under the bus. But likewise we shouldn't believe every gun owner is willing to maintain that moral high ground.

The Fudds in my neck of the Wisconsin woods had an absolute fecal hemmorhage when I bagged my whitetail limit last year using none other than my little SAR-1 sidefolder AK. That was *precisely* the effect I wanted, even though I could just as easily have taken a Winchester 94 or Remington 700 into the field.

I'll do the same again next week. The look on their faces is absolutely priceless.

The P-R excise tax is at the root of the latest kerfluffle with ATF declaring anybody who "substantially" modifies a rifle a manufacturer.. What happens is Gunsmith Bob buys an action for say $1000 dollars(and pays the 11%) and then builds a 5000 dollar gun using it, he doesn't pay the Revenuers the additional 440 bucks in excise taxes..

Until the new ruling came out, mandating Class 7 FFLs for many people with only a Class 3 doing custom rifles.

In other words - BATFE generates ulcers for everybody, in order to latch onto money they think they're being cheated out of.